Liquify Drums, Slightly

Tips & Tricks
1

Ok, some of you may know this one already, but I thought I’d quickly share:

If you’re using cheap, nasty, low quality drum samples then the sounds can get really fatiguing if the samples are repeating over and over. If it’s not easy for you to get high quality percussion sounds then try the following using Renoise’s Chorus effect to get a more organic sound.

Send all the drum sounds you want ‘liquefied’ to a group send (a whole heap of send devices going to a common send channel). Put the native Chorus effect on the send channel. The key to getting an organic sound is to put the dry-wet slider to 100% wet. This means you’re getting nothing but pitch modulation (assuming you retain 0ms delay). Set the feedback level to 0% so you’re not getting any layering of the sound. Then, make the Phase to 0 so the signal kept at natural stereo. Now you have two sliders to play with to get the feel right:

Play with the modulation depth to control the amount of ‘wobble’, different depths will suit different sounds. Then adjust the modulation rate to control the speed of the ‘wobble’ - generally slower speeds sound more organic like tape ‘wow’, but make it fast if you want something weird and fun.

Give it shot, let me know how you go ;)

1 Like
2

thanks, great tip, added this to my Renoise Cheat Sheet.

3

Oh dash it, I forgot to add a point about the Phase. Original post edited.

4

Good Tip. Thx :)

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Thanks Mr. Dollin

6

Post examples if you nail an ace sound ;)

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I’ve been using a trick like this occasionally too, but not for drums alone, but most often for pads and synth lines (and sometimes on the entire song overall) to produce some Boards of Canada style of wow and flutter. I also adorn that with a little bit of a slow LFO on the chorus rate to make it more irregular. You can also automate the delay parameter for more extreme effect but that’s best kept rare.